ASLM
by Mangaka in Training
Summary: When the sisters are spied on by a young duo, one of them learns their secret. Protected by the system force, they have no choice to trust him with their secret. However, a nosy demon can't wait to find a way to use his immunity to her advantage...


So hey, this is the first time in about two years that I've decided to pick up the pen. And how better to do it than by scrapping my old base work and recreating it a third time?! I suppose I should call this an excercise in writing, since I never seem to finish any of my stories. However, as always, I'm tryin' to fix that.

So this is the story about Damion. Yeah yeah, I've written about him two times before. But those were utter FAILURES that I had to delete. I keep them on my computer so I can remind myself that I don't suck as bad at writing anymore. There has only been one sucsessful Damion in the past, and he exists on another website entirely.

So here we go. Takin' back the old name. I present to you, ASLM.

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"So… why are we doing this again?"

Two young men dressed in navy blue school uniforms were looking down from a tree at a couple of people who were, for some reason, eating lunch outside. A wall separated them, which is why they had to scale the tree in the first place. One of the boys, the one with spiked black hair and distinctly Asian features looked through a pair of binoculars at the two, his rimless glasses resting atop his head. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, exposing his collarbone. He turned to the other, his grin widening and his dark hazel eyes shining mischievously.

"Because we have something to learn from this!" he stated matter-o-factly. "I've been trailing-"

"Stalking," the other interrupted.

"_Trailing_," he repeated, "These people since I saw them walking down the street on Sunday. Take a look!"

The raven-haired boy handed his blonde friend the binoculars, which he reluctantly took. This boy didn't look Asian at all, he looked like a regular American teen. He was slightly taller than his companion, and his hair fell in straight lengths around his face and head, giving him a streamlined look. He held the binoculars up to his grayish-green eyes and looked down at the couple below them.

He immediately noticed the woman sitting at the table. A slow, impressed sound slipped from his mouth, and he zoomed in a little. She had light brown hair that was put up in a high ponytail, and it cascaded down to her elegantly-shaped waist. She dressed tastefully and beautifully, almost in a comforting way, as if she were a mother or a caretaker. Her eyes were a dazzling clear blue, and her smile was warm and sincere. There were blue marks on her cheeks and forehead, but these odd tattoos only seemed to accent her beauty.

"Is she for real?" the blonde said out loud, hypnotized.

The friend smiled and nodded, staring down at her. "Yeah, she caught my eye too. I've been asking around, and apparently she's pretty well known around here," he said. "She's taken, as if it wasn't possible. But the surprising thing is who she's with. Look at the guy!"

The blonde swung his head a little, taking a look at who the woman was talking to. His mouth hung open, aghast. "No way!" the blonde almost yelled.

It was just an ordinary guy. Not simply ordinary, but extraordinarily ordinary. He had an ordinary white long sleeved shirt on, and a pair of ordinary jeans. He had an ordinary haircut, ordinary dark eyes, he looked like any ordinary Asian that the blonde had ever seen. Even more ordinary than the most ordinary Japanese businessmen.

The first thought that came to the blonde's mind was that he must've been a tiger in the sack. However he soon dismissed this, still not understanding why they were here. "Alright, so it's weird... really weird, but that doesn't explain why we're here."

The hazel eyed boy sighed, and slid his glasses from his head to the edge of his nose, freeing the captive hair they had been holding down. "Because bro, if a guy like that," he said, motioning to the man, "Can get a girl like that," he said, pointing a finger at the woman, "Then he obviously knows something we don't know about getting a good woman. I want to find out, and I was gracious enough to let you come along on this expedition."

"You dragged me up a tree behind an old musty temple as soon as I got out of last period so we could stalk a happy couple," the blonde corrected. "Sounds more like abduction and invasion of privacy to me."

"But," he continued, noticing the way his brother was about to object, "You do have a point. That guy is more Asian than you Yuki." The black-haired young man smirked at this statement.

000

Ah, another quiet day at the temple, thought college student Keiichi Morisato as he sat outside, enjoying the gentle fall breeze. The very wind blowing around the woman sitting across from him seemed to emanate some sort of intoxicating sense of comfort. It smelled of her, felt like her, and touched him gently and kindly, just like her. Belldandy. His Belldandy.

Keiichi smiled as she offered him some warm tea, letting his fingers linger over her soft, porcelain hands as he took it. She seemed to have noticed this, because a light, innocent blush flushed her cheeks and she smiled at him.

It was these moments that Keiichi loved. The peaceful moments alone, between the disasters that happened around Nekomi, especially the ones concerning his goddess and her sisters. Those times seemed to come and go now, and the two found themselves with more time to spend together than they usually did.

This time, for instance, Belldandy had suggested that since it was such a nice day, the two should eat lunch outside.

Keiichi's only worry was that her sisters might come and ruin the wonderful moment, although her older sister, Urd, seemed to be bothering them less and less about their relationship than she had when they first met.

And yet, despite the moment of bliss, Keiichi couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched...

Suddenly Urd could be seen walking towards the small blanket that the couple had set up, and Keiichi smiled hopelessly, figuring that their blissful moment was about to end abruptly.

"Oh, hello Urd," Belldandy said with her usual smile, polite as ever. "Would you like to join us?"

'Damn,' Keiichi thought, 'I should've told Bell I wanted to be alone with her. Then she would've told Urd to go away! Why don't I think of these things?'

"Belldandy," the bronzed goddess said, her tone serious, "There's a call for you from upstairs."

000

The blonde's breath caught in his throat as the new woman approached the couple. "Daaayum..." he muttered in English, obviously taken from the brother's old home in America.

This new woman seemed to have jumped straight out of Sports Illustrated. Shapely, smooth legs, an amazing tan, a glorious bust line, and beautiful flowing white hair, reminding the blonde of his trip to Niagara Falls. She wore a curve hugging black skirt and top, which exposed her firm, lovely midriff. She too had similar blue markings, like the other. The first woman was unearthly beautiful. This one was drop-dead sexy.

Yuki noticed her entrance. "Hey! Don't hog the binoculars! Gimme!" He tried to take them from his brother, but the blonde held tight. He was trying to find out just what this girl's relationship was to the ordinary man.

Finally, Yuki snatched away the binoculars, scowling at the green-eyed boy before looking through them and practically drooling. "Hehe... that's her sister, or so I hear. They don't look anything alike... but not like I care, she's hawt," Yuki marveled, using the same English slang his brother did. "And the best part is she's single! Isn't that awesome?!"

The woman sat down next to the man as the first got up and went inside for some reason. The tanned vixen moved closer to him, earning a startled reaction. Apparantly the man wasn't as comfortable around her as he was with the first woman.

000

"Gaaaaah! Urd! What are you doing?" Keiichi yelped, as if he hadn't experienced this enough. But he calmed down when he saw her expression. She was serious. And if Urd was serious, it often meant bad news for Kei, usually about Bell.

"What's wrong?" Keiichi asked, the concern heavy in his voice.

Urd sighed before spilling it. "It's Yggdrasil. They have to perform the annual cleanout soon, and that means that only the systems that operate Earth are going to be online. We're going to be without power soon."

Keiichi's forehead wrinkled a bit. "That's it? C'mon, we can totally deal with that. Bell will be fine."

"You're not getting it, are you?" Urd said, looking around as if they were being watched, which actually wasn't too far off. "Mo- Hild may use that opportunity to strike! We won't have enough power to ward her off if we're operating on our backup power sources."

K1 nodded, realizing that she was right. Hild had always been a malicious, devious little tyrant, and she was too smart to pass up an opportunity to strike while the iron was so blisteringly scorching.

"Well... what do we do?" Keiichi asked.

Urd looked down at her lap, her hands fidgeting. Keiichi offered her what was left of his tea, and she smiled worriedly and took a sip, calming herself a bit. "I'm not sure... but if it comes down to it... please protect Belldandy," she said, looking at him with a hint of fear in her eyes.

Keiichi smiled and puffed out his chest a little, trying to ease her mind. "Hey, you don't even have to ask me."

Belldandy returned, noticing that both of them were smiling happily and talking. "Ah, thank you for telling me Urd... you do know what that was for, don't you?"

Urd nodded, getting up and brushing off her skirt. "Don't worry, I know. And Keiichi!" she said, pointing down at him, "Buy me some sake or I'll go powerless! And you know how I hate that!" Kei nervously nodded to her.

Suddenly there was a shout behind them, and the three looked up to see something tumbling down over the wall that surrounded the temple grounds. The figure grabbed onto the shingles atop the wall, clinging on for dear life. The distance to the ground wasn't too much, but the black-haired young man could break something if he fell from that hight and landed in a bad way.

"Rrrg, dammit!" cursed the boy in English. He had planned on jumping from the tree to the top of the wall to get a better look, but one of the shingles had come loose as he landed. And now, the shingle he was holding onto was beginning to fall out of place too.

Belldandy didn't think, she only acted, as she usually did when she needed to protect people she didn't even know from harm. "Wind, rush forward and make a cushion to protect them from harm!" she called out, and a gust of wind came from behind her just as the boy began to fall.

But as he did, he called out for his brother. "Damion! Help!" Another figure jumped from the tree, landing on the roof and immediately jumping for the other boy. If he hadn't lost his balance upon landing he probably would've caught him too, but he was an inch too short to catch his hand.

The blonde's eyes went wide however, when Yuki stopped suddenly, the shingle he was holding on smacking him squarely in the face. His head fell to the side, a small red trickle sliding from his eyebrow. He was floating inches above the ground. There was no visible reason, yet Damion distinctly heard the sound of wind rushing by. Then he remembered what the brown-haired woman had shouted, and he looked up at her, staring at her curiously.

Yuki dropped to the ground with a thud as Belldandy realized he was looking right at her, accusing her of some unknown crime. She stood in silence, along with Keiichi and Urd, who only looked on as the blonde, apparently called Damion, jumped down and examined the black-haired boy.

000

"Just who... what are you people?" Damion asked, watching his brother's lightly breathing, unconscious form. The residents of the temple had taken it upon themselves to help the brothers out, but now they had to deal with what one of the mortals had seen. Belldandy and Keiichi had invited the two into the tea room, Urd however, had disappeared to receive a syringe from her personal supply of memory altering drugs.

Of course, since first-class goddesses don't lie, Belldandy answered his question fully and truthfully. "My sister and I are goddesses. I am a goddess first-class, who works under the goddess help line in heaven, and my sister is a second-class goddess who works as a system administrator for Yggdrasil."

Damion's eye began to twitch. "Uhm... come again?" he said, unable to process what he had been told.

Belldandy smiled and began to explain again. "My sister and I-"

Keiichi held up his hand, interrupting her. "I think he understands, it's just that he uh... doesn't believe you, that's all," he stated in his usual nervous tone.

Damion nodded, trying to decide whether she was lying to him or if she was as truthful as she seemed. It certainly didn't look like she was deceiving him. But at the same time, a goddess? Damion had been brought up to believe in one GOD, and although he wasn't perfect with his religion, even borderline agnostic, he hadn't ever considered there to be a goddess, let alone more than one.

"Okay, wait, you mean you're like an angel, right?" he asked, trying to rationalize a situation that was already irrational to begin with. "A messenger sent from God?"

Belldandy looked thoughtful for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, the Almighty One does oversee our work and leads us, but an angel is a very different creature, I assure you," she answered. "Would you like to see mine?"

Before he could pop the question, Keiichi interrupted Damion, waving his hands between the two of them. "A-alright, that's enough for today. I don't want to start a religious battle here. Besides, Urd will be back soon with the-" Keiichi caught himself before he could mention the memory serum.

"The what?" Damion asked, more curious about these people than ever before. Being goddesses did kind of explain why these two women were such perfect specimens, but the blonde young man was beginning to suspect that perhaps they were being misled and this 'Almighty One' was nothing but a cult leader. There was no way he could know that these women were only two of an entire divine civilization that watched over and maintained Earth.

Before anything more could be said, Urd returned with a singsong tone, "I'm baaack!" She slid open the door and procured the syringe immediately startling Damion.

"H-hey!! What is that?!" he shouted, causing Yuki to shift in his slumber.

Urd smiled devilishly and drew closer to him. "It's just a little something to make all this go away. Don't worry, it's heavenly technology, so there's no way it can fail!" Keiichi sighed, he could recount hundreds of times that she had said the same thing, and the exact opposite had happened. Damion however, wasn't buying it.

"H-hey! Back off!" he yelled, pulling back as she came closer and closer. That's when he noticed she wasn't actually taking steps. She was floating towards him. _Floating_. The poor, confused blonde was beginning to wonder if he was even awake.

Suddenly Urd lunged at him, forcing Damion to duck off to the side. He would've made a break for it if Yuki hadn't been unconscious and idle. "Back off you… you… demon woman!"

That got Urd's attention. If there was one thing she was sensitive about, it was most certainly her lineage. Damion had just inadvertently brought about her wrath. She whirled around, staring daggers through him. "WHAT DID YOU SAAAAY?!" she boomed, the air around her ionizing, crackling with power.

In the next moment Damion was knocked down by a shockwave from a lightning bolt barely slipping past him, his ears buzzing from the charge seconds after it passed. A small hair on top of his head fizzled with a light flame and flickered down, burning away the strand until it reached his scalp. If not for that slight sensation atop his head, he wouldn't have been pulled back into reality long enough to dodge the next one.

"You little punk! Advent depth charge, advent depth charge, ADVENT DEPTH CHARGE!" Urd screamed, throwing lightning bolts every which way, yelling out one of her signature spells over and over again. Damion barely had enough time to breathe. Belldandy begged her sister to stop, but Urd was too busy trying to zap the poor boy to pay any attention.

Eventually she got tired of his running, and she used one of her favorite spells. "Dammit! Slow down already! Voice control activate!" Damion suddenly stopped moving right on the spot, a dull, empty look in his eyes. Urd smiled and twirled her hand ever so slightly, the syringe sliding over her fingertips as she approached the helpless human.

She was lifting the syringe up to prick the poor lad when he inexplicably sprung to life and grabbed her wrist, sliding his hand over the syringe and wresting it from her loose grip. She barely had time to make a full exclamation as he jammed the needle into her thigh, through her skirt, pushing down on the depressor with his thumb.

As Urd fell to the ground, Damion jumped back out into the courtyard, which was now riddled with smoking craters from the goddess' misdirected assault. "Anyone else wanna dance with the mastah?!" Damion shouted, not realizing the extent of his current dorkiness and making a ridiculously dramatic martial arts pose.

As the fool was busy being a fool, Belldandy's attention was solely focused on her fallen sister. "Oh my... this is not good..." she murmured, pushing aside Urd's wintery locks to examine her dreamlike expression, her violet eyes half-lidded.

"Is she going to be okay?" Keiichi asked actively ignoring Damion's (failed) attempt to be intimidating.

"I'm afraid that mixture was specifically created for human biology," the goddess of goddesses explained. "While it would knock out a human and render about half an hour of their most recent memories immemorable, in a divine being all it would do is... well, how to put it... put them in a glass cage in their mind! Urd can see out, but she's temporarily lost all movement ability."

"So medicines for different species cause different effects then eh?" Damion asked, leaning over and watching them.

"Yes, that's absolutely right!" Belldandy said with a smile.

"Ah! It's kinda like how medicine for an animal could make a human really sick, right?" Keiichi said, making an affirmative fist-into-palm motion with his hands.

The three of them began to laugh, only to have all but Belldandy's voice cut out suddenly. After that gonzo moment had passed, a new one began with Keiichi being dragged about while grasping onto Damion's leg to prevent his escape, the latter repeatedly yelling "Agh! Zombie, zombie!"

000

And so it came to be that Damion was forced to sit down across from the couple, as each group currently had an unconcious loved one in the room. Quite the tentative peace, but still. "Okay okay, let's start over here. I'm Damion, and the unconcious womanizer over there is my younger brother Yuki."

"It's a pleasure to meet you Damion. I am the goddess Belldandy, first class unlimited licence." Damion opened his mouth to speak, but Keiichi interjected.

"We'll get to that part in a second. I'm Keiichi Morisato, and personally I'd like to know why you're being so rude. I mean, you're not even giving us your full name!"

"So what? Neither did she!" Damion said, pointing at the smiling goddess.

"Oh, but I did!" Belldandy said. "Goddesses do not have any last names to speak of!"

"That's all beside the point!" K1 shouted. "What were you doing in the tree outside our home anyway?!"

At this a new voice chimed in. "I can explain all that quite easily," Yuki stated. "By the way, my name is Yuki Matsuhiko, and my brother shares the same surname. Forgive him for his rudeness, he hails from America."

Damion jabbed his very-much-loved brother in the ribs with his elbow. "I was raised here... mostly," he said with a sideways glare, "And this was all your fault! Besides, when did you wake up?" he added in English. The only other person in the room who actually caught what he said was Belldandy. So it was pretty much everyone but Keiichi.

"Just now, my brother. Just in time to catch the end of mister... what is your name?"

"Wait a minute, you didn't get my name, yet you knew he didn't give his last name... how long did you say you've been concious?" Keiichi said, hoping he didn't have another person 'in the know' about Belldandy and her sisters.

"Oh he's simply a rude little boy, my brother. He never ever gives out his surname. He seems to believe he still lives in his homeland, where such uncouth behaivior is not only acceptable but the norm! Barbaric, I know!" Another jab prevented Yuki from continuing forward. Yuki always did talk too much when he was pretending to be a polite and well-mannered young man. His vocabulary also magically transformed from something comprable to 'hey, check out that hot chick' to 'my, what an attractive and intelligent young lady'.

It was at this point that Yuki noticed the unconcious attractive and intelligent young lady (hot chick) passed out on the floor. "Damion what did you do?" was his first reaction. Naturally, Damion wasn't the only brother who knew what his sibling was capable of, and how they usually were around women. Not to say Damion made a habit of jamming syringes full of memory-altering fluids into attractive and intelligent young ladies' thighs, but he had many comparable moments in his life.

"Hey, she's the one who came at me with a syringe full of god-knows-what," Damion said, waving his hands in defense.

"Wow, you just met and she's already trying to slip you something. You've either made a very good or very bad impression on her." Yuki looked back down at the unblinking gaze of the goddess. "I would guess bad," he added. "I can't wait to see how it gets worse when she wakes up!"

"Loving siblings huh? Kinda reminds me of another relationship I know," Keiichi mumbled to himself.

"I think it's a showing of how much they know each other!" Belldandy said, giggling a little.

"Anyway, while what happened to this young woman is certainly my dear brother's fault, being here was my own. You see, in our English literature club, we were all assigned the task of finding a relationship comparable to some of the great romances immortalized in the great works of Sir William Shakespere. And anyone in Nekomi who knows anything about romance knows about the unassuming couple at the former Takirihongan temple."

Now while Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship could certainly be compared to some of the greatest literary romances of Shakespere (minus the tragic dual-suicide by poison), Yuki was obviously, to his brother at least, lying through his teeth. They were part of no such club, not that one even existed at their school.

However, this excuse was enough to tide over even the sceptical Mr. Morisato. Except for one part. "Then why didn't you knock on the front door like a regular person instead of spying on us from a tree like Mar- I mean... eh, a burglar?"

"OH!" Yuki shouted suddenly, catching Keiichi so off guard that he fell backwards. "But if I were to do that we couldn't possibly get a true representation of your love for each other! It's the same principle as photographing animals in the wild, my friend, they won't act natural if they know they're being watched! Why, even humans don't smile as naturally whenever they have their picture taken, that is why!"

Keiichi, after righting himself, nodded in agreement. It did make sense, after all. Damion however, nodded in amusement. With every passing day the blonde was more certain that his brother could sell glasses to the blind and shoes to snakes.

"Hey though, listen, just tell her when she wakes up... she is gonna wake up right?" Damion asked, at which Belldandy nodded, "Just tell her I'm sorry about all this. Hey, I know when there's a secret that needs to be kept, and I know when I'm dealing with something bigger than myself. So don't worry about a thing, all right? Just know that if any of you try to mess with my head you'll end up like her, and I don't care if your the devil himself."

Urd, had she been in control of her nervous system, would've flinched a bit at that one.

"Haha, if there is one thing about my brother you need to watch out for, it's his iron will. Once he makes up his mind, that's all there is to it. It's like there's a higher force watching out for him or something!" Yuki said.

000

As the sun set on the temple, the two brothers waved goodbye to their new aquaintences. As the siblings decended the stone steps onto the street, Bell and K1 watched on silently.

"Well... that was a fine new way to interrupt yet another rare chance..." Keiichi said, trailing off. "Do you really think he'll keep his promise and not say anything? Not that anyone would believe him but-"

"Yuki was right." Belldandy said.

"Excuse me?"

"There is a higher force watching over Damion. I noticed something was odd about him when he was able to break Urd's voice control. That's when I also noticed that he doesn't give off any aura to me. I can't tell how he feels because the color of his aura doesn't appear to me. The System Force is protecting him. Keiichi... either he, or someone close to him, was granted a wish that he would be protected from divine powers."

Keiichi was confused. "But wait, why would someone want to protect him from goddesses?"

Belldandy shook her head. "I don't think that was the intent of the wisher. I think they wanted him to be safe from the other side."

000

Monitoring from a far off distance with a set of super-powered spying devices, Hild had to agree. She could not see the boy's emotional state either, so it would have to be the power of the System Force shielding him. But just because he couldn't be directly influenced didn't mean there wasn't another way she could use this new and possibly invaluable resource to her advantage. After all, if he was capable of incapacitating her own daughter, she could only fathom what else he might do if coerced the right way...

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Lessee if I can keep this up.


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